Kimiz: mare's milk that makes you drunk
Editorial contextWood explains how the Kirghiz and Uzbeks make kimiz (kumiss) from mare's milk, churned overnight and ready by sunrise. A spoonful, he was told, makes a man drunk, but their spoons are huge. He also passes on, while flagging it as hostile gossip, a claim that kimiz season brought drunken excess.
The Kirghiz, as well as the Uzbeks, keep brood mares, according to their means, and the acidulated milk of these animals yields them in spring the intoxicating liquor called kimiz. … A spoonful will produce inebriety, but their kashuk or spoon is much more capacious than the largest upon our tables.
About Kirghiz and Uzbeks
Continue in this sourceLieutenant Wood's winter journey to the source of the Oxus1836 to 1838 · 13 passagesWhy the Kirghiz prefer daughters
Editorial contextAmong the Kirghiz, Wood learned, a daughter was more welcome than a son: herding needs few men, and a girl brought a large bride price. He also records that a widow passed to her husband's brother, and that a stranger who married her started a blood feud.
With the Kirghiz, a daughter is more desired than a son. Their flocks and herds, though large, do not require many men to manage them … But for a daughter a large sum is obtained … often as much as £40, if she be not above fifteen years of age.
About Kirghiz nomads
Continue in this sourceLieutenant Wood's winter journey to the source of the Oxus1836 to 1838 · 13 passagesShamans turned Muslims
Editorial contextWood reports that the Kirghiz had converted from shamanism to Islam in the early 1600s, and that his Uzbek companion claimed the old beliefs lingered. Their chiefs, called Bai, had patriarchal rather than despotic authority.
They were converted from the Shamanian superstition to Mohamedanism early in the seventeenth century. The former belief, if I may credit Abdal Ghani, is not yet thoroughly eradicated ; though in our intercourse with the people, they seemed like all proselytes to erring creeds, to be filled with the most abject reverence for their new doctrines.
About Kirghiz nomads
Keep in mind
The date of conversion is Wood's statement without a source; the survival of shamanism is his guide's claim.
